Almost Best Friends
by Netherwood
Summary: Ron reflects on his bond with his best friend after seeing Hermione comfort Harry.  Monologue from Ron's POV, oneshot. Now out of date. Thanks, HBP


Best Friends

by Netherwood

I wrote this because, despite being a Harry/Hermione shipper, I do have empathy for Ron and have been in situations and friendships like this.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and friends are not mine. Did you think J.K. Rowling posts on fanfiction sites? It would be cool if she did, but if she does, we don't know her screen name, and there's too many authors to pick through, so we'll just assume that she doesn't. Not mine.

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I thought that being best friends with the great Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, would be brilliant. Lots of action, lots of glory, and lots of fun. As it turns out, there's sometimes too much action, and that the glory usually doesn't spill onto nearby friends, except when everyone thinks Harry's a nutter. It's still pretty good, though. Five years've shown that being best friends with Harry, not the Boy Who Lived, is pretty good, too. He's a wicked Quidditch player, he's fun to be with, and I can always count on him in a fight with Malfoy. Yes, he does have a temper and he does tend to have the Boy Who Lived stuff mess just Harry things up too often. But it's usually still pretty good.

The problem is that we're not really best friends.

Sure, we spend most of our time together. We laugh and joke and think up ways to get Malfoy expelled and Snape embarrassed in front of the school. And don't forget Quidditch—we can sit forever and put together Quidditch plays. Well, until it's time to go fly circles around Slytherin, anyway. We can count on each other in a tight spot, too. And as weird as it is to say, understanding is a big part of friendship, too, and it usually seems like Harry understands what kind of guy I am and catches on to how I'm feeling. He's my best friend.

I'm not his best friend, though. I'm not the one who understands him the best and can tell him that he's being a prat when he needs to hear it. Some of the time, he was downright scary last year, our fifth year, and I had no idea what was going through his mind or when he'd explode again or what to do about it.

His best friend is Hermione. She knows him better than anyone. I keep thinking she has some book titled something like "The Care and Feeding of Harry Potter" somewhere. She even knows some way to keep Harry from blowing up, or at make him cool down enough to hear a bit of reason. I don't know how she knows him so well. I just remember how Harry was hiding from everyone last Christmas. He wouldn't even look at any of us. When Hermione showed up, I tried to talk her out of trying to drag Harry downstairs. As much as I hated it, Harry had proven that he wasn't coming out unless You-Know-Who was downstairs trying to have a go at him again. Hermione went anyway. I expected Harry to explode and Hermione to come back almost cursing or crying or something. I didn't expect to see her gently leading a very lost looking Harry out of his hiding place.

Now that I think about it, I shouldn't have been surprised when it happened again this last summer. Harry was still dealing with Sirius's death. He still is, actually. Harry was a wreck over the summer. He went for days at a time without sleeping, and he never ate enough. I was really worried when he showed up at Sirius's place right after his birthday looking like a vampire or something else that doesn't belong in daylight. I kept thinking that Dumbledore would take Harry back to Hogwarts so he could stay in the hospital wing and be force fed for the rest of the summer or something. Hermione showed up a few days later and broke through Harry's walls in a week. I still don't know what she did. It seems like more and more of what happens between them is beyond me. She helped him deal with it some. He trusted her.

Looking back even further, I should've known this would happen from fourth year. She knew he was telling the truth about the Tri-Wizard Tournament. She knew it. How? Even I thought Harry had put himself in the Goblet. I guess she just completely trusted him, when even I wouldn't. She's the only one who did. Even I was too busy being a jealous prat at first.

Maybe I should've seen it third year, even. She put her neck on the line when she told McGonagall about the Firebolt. It would've been a lot easier to not do anything and stay on our good side, but she just couldn't do that. She put Harry above herself. She didn't want Harry hurt, even if he'd be mad at her. To be honest, I was more mad than Harry was. It's like he understood why Hermione had done it. When we weren't spending time with Hermione, she spent a lot of time crying. Now I wonder if she was crying because she'd lost us, or because she'd lost Harry.

Trying to figure out when I should've seen this is pointless, though, because I just barely saw it, and thinking harder won't help. We were waiting for Harry to get back from one of his meetings with Dumbledore. Sometimes they talk about You-Know-Who and what he's doing. Sometimes Dumbledore trains Harry. Whatever they did tonight, it wasn't easy. I guess I had fallen asleep by the fireplace, because I woke up when Harry stepped into the empty common room. No one paid me any attention once Harry came in. He looked ready to cry. I've only seen him like that a few times, and every time he looked like he was fighting the tears because he didn't want anyone to see. This time, though, he didn't hold back. Not when she took one look at his face and held her arms out to him. Harry stumbled into her hug and just started sobbing. They sank onto a couch and Hermione just held Harry while he cried.

It's been about an hour since I sneaked up to our dorm. I couldn't watch that. I felt like an intruder. Something is telling me that Harry would've kept fighting his tears if he knew I was there. It's telling me that he's getting everything he'll need down there. It's telling me that I should face facts. I'm down one best friend connection. I never really had it, really. Harry's still my best friend, really. There's no one I'd rather skive off class with. But I'm not his best friend. It's not two-way. When I'm sitting next to him in class, waiting to trade a look of complete boredom with him, he'll be paying more attention to the girl sitting to his other side than to me. When we're plodding through the halls back to the common room after Quidditch practice, we'll be grinning tiredly and I'll be wishing little minutes like that won't end, but he'll be waiting for it to end so he can get back to the common room and see Hermione. I'll always look to Harry and see him looking to someone else. I'll be stuck trying to get noticed while those two have everything they need.

It's going to hurt to watch them, knowing now that our trio isn't really a trio.

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End file.
